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Coffeehouse - How retarted it is that Win7 setup still doesn't provide...

OnlyJack — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 04:10:06 GMT

OH MY GOSH! I just tried installing Win7 beta on my PC and just like it happened with Vista the install was crashing all the time due to the infamous 3-years-old-and-still-unfixed ATI TDR bug and there were no ways to install Win7 other than opening the PC case and swapping my Radeon with a GeForce during the install in order to apply the TRD fix (running MSCONFIG and setting the # of CPU cores and max ram in the boot options) later when windows had installed.

WHY the hell the Windows setup still doesn't provide an easy way to avoid installing/loading any 3rd party driver during the install? What if I was using a laptop and could not replace the videocard?

Can somebody please ask the dev team to add an option that tells the windows setup to install only generic safe-mode drivers avoiding those poorly written OEM drivers making the Win7 install impossible? Many people would thank them for that.

--Jack

Coffeehouse - How retarted it is that Win7 setup still doesn't provide...

Ion Todirel — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 05:01:16 GMT

report it as a bug, it's good that you posted about it here, but if you want someone to take care of it, post it on connect...

Coffeehouse - How retarted it is that Win7 setup still doesn't provide...

OnlyJack — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 05:17:59 GMT

Ion Todirel said:
report it as a bug, it's good that you posted about it here, but if you want someone to take care of it, post it on connect...

I wish I could but I am participating only in the public beta, I didn't apply for the private beta on connect. I can use only the pretty useless send feedback tool whose reports are most likely dumped to > nul.

Coffeehouse - How retarted it is that Win7 setup still doesn't provide...

Sven Groot — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 05:26:43 GMT

Interesting. I have an ATI Radeon HD3850 and have never even heard of this bug, let alone experienced it. Is it specific to certain model cards?

Coffeehouse - How retarted it is that Win7 setup still doesn't provide...

OnlyJack — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 05:56:05 GMT

Sven Groot said:
Interesting. I have an ATI Radeon HD3850 and have never even heard of this bug, let alone experienced it. Is it specific to certain model cards?

The TDR bug is quite widespread and mostly happens on assembled computers with multicore CPUs, 4gb or more of RAM on multiple RAM sticks and Vista x64. There are plenty of posts on the AMD forums about the issue (virtually any atikmdag crash could be related to that bug) but they don't seem to care, they prefer putting useless PUMA stickers on hardware where their drivers don't even work, like my HP dv7z where I can't put any ATI catalyst newer than 8.9 or else resume from standby would stop working. Gotta love this company.

Coffeehouse - How retarted it is that Win7 setup still doesn't provide...

Sven Groot — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 06:07:19 GMT

OnlyJack said:

Sven Groot said:

*snip*

The TDR bug is quite widespread and mostly happens on assembled computers with multicore CPUs, 4gb or more of RAM on multiple RAM sticks and Vista x64. There are plenty of posts on the AMD forums about the issue (virtually any atikmdag crash could be related to that bug) but they don't seem to care, they prefer putting useless PUMA stickers on hardware where their drivers don't even work, like my HP dv7z where I can't put any ATI catalyst newer than 8.9 or else resume from standby would stop working. Gotta love this company.

Ok, I have 4GB RAM on 2 sticks, a multicore CPU, and Vista x64 (and now Win7 x64), and I still haven't experienced this bug. Guess I'm just lucky.

Coffeehouse - How retarted it is that Win7 setup still doesn't provide...

Elmer — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 07:27:34 GMT

OnlyJack said:

Ion Todirel said:

*snip*

I wish I could but I am participating only in the public beta, I didn't apply for the private beta on connect. I can use only the pretty useless send feedback tool whose reports are most likely dumped to > nul.

I think there are some people here who can report this for you ??

But, if it's widespread. then perhaps it's already been reported.

Coffeehouse - How retarted it is that Win7 setup still doesn't provide...

OnlyJack — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 07:57:22 GMT

elmer said:

OnlyJack said:

*snip*

I think there are some people here who can report this for you ??

But, if it's widespread. then perhaps it's already been reported.

The driver crash has certainly been already reported by other people - I, too, installed the drivers without applying the fix first so that I could get a couple of error reports to send - however nobody guarantees that it's going to be fixed by ATI considering the same bug has been plaguing Vista users since Vista's launch.

Not all the hardware manufacturers release "floppy" versions of their drivers that can be installed during the Windows setup so the only way to get the setup to work other than swapping the hardware would be to use nlite/vlite to remove the drivers or a WIM image made on a virtual machine on another PC and that's a very big waste of time.

If the Windows setup had a checkbox (or even an hidden keyboard shortcut if the devs don't want to make the setup GUI any harder to understand) to disable loading of all third-party drivers then having successful setups even in presence of broken OEM drivers that require updates or weird mumbo jumbos to work would be much easier.

Coffeehouse - How retarted it is that Win7 setup still doesn't provide...

stevo_ — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 09:19:55 GMT

Sven Groot said:

OnlyJack said:

*snip*

Ok, I have 4GB RAM on 2 sticks, a multicore CPU, and Vista x64 (and now Win7 x64), and I still haven't experienced this bug. Guess I'm just lucky.

Same, running two systems that have 4GIG of ram, modern multicore intel cpu and a 3650 / 4870 and haven't had this problem with vista nor 7's setup.. there must be something else to it. I did however find that my p35 mobo could quite happily screw up 1TB harddrives by telling them (yes actually telling the drive so it thinks this forever unless i purposely reset it), that their storage size is in fact 31.5mb.. turns out thats pretty well known also, just needed to update my bios.

Coffeehouse - How retarted it is that Win7 setup still doesn't provide...

Scott — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 13:35:31 GMT

OnlyJack said:

Sven Groot said:

*snip*

The TDR bug is quite widespread and mostly happens on assembled computers with multicore CPUs, 4gb or more of RAM on multiple RAM sticks and Vista x64. There are plenty of posts on the AMD forums about the issue (virtually any atikmdag crash could be related to that bug) but they don't seem to care, they prefer putting useless PUMA stickers on hardware where their drivers don't even work, like my HP dv7z where I can't put any ATI catalyst newer than 8.9 or else resume from standby would stop working. Gotta love this company.

I have 6GB on 4 sticks, a Core 2 Duo, 965P chipset, and an HD3850 (before that an X1900GT) and have never had this problem on Vista or Win7.

Coffeehouse - How retarted it is that Win7 setup still doesn't provide...

phreaks — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 13:54:02 GMT

spivonious said:

OnlyJack said:

*snip*

I have 6GB on 4 sticks, a Core 2 Duo, 965P chipset, and an HD3850 (before that an X1900GT) and have never had this problem on Vista or Win7.

I've never had cancer, therefore it doesn't exist.

Coffeehouse - How retarted it is that Win7 setup still doesn't provide...

Sven Groot — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 14:00:02 GMT

phreaks said:

spivonious said:

*snip*

I've never had cancer, therefore it doesn't exist.

I don't think any of us are saying it doesn't exist. It simply appears there is another component necessary for this bug to occur that we don't yet know about.

Coffeehouse - How retarted it is that Win7 setup still doesn't provide...

AndyC — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 14:03:05 GMT

phreaks said:

spivonious said:

*snip*

I've never had cancer, therefore it doesn't exist.

Surely it would make more sense to ensure that in-box drivers work without crashing, rather than provide some convoluted method of installing? If the ATi driver doesn't cut the mustard, keep it off the disc altogether. Then they might actually get their act together and fix it.

Coffeehouse - How retarted it is that Win7 setup still doesn't provide...

Sven Groot — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 14:19:49 GMT

I made a post in one of the Windows 7 newsgroups on Connect, pointing to this thread. Hopefully someone who knows what to do about it will see it.

Coffeehouse - How retarted it is that Win7 setup still doesn't provide...

Yggdrasil — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 14:48:00 GMT

Sven Groot said:
I made a post in one of the Windows 7 newsgroups on Connect, pointing to this thread. Hopefully someone who knows what to do about it will see it.

I hope so, though it's hard to take seriously a bug report that starts with the word "retarded". And misspelled at that.

Coffeehouse - How retarted it is that Win7 setup still doesn't provide...

Scott — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 15:17:32 GMT

phreaks said:

spivonious said:

*snip*

I've never had cancer, therefore it doesn't exist.

All I'm saying is that what he stated as the cause of the bug can't be the cause, since I've had two different ATI cards and haven't experienced it.

Maybe it's yet another nVidia chipset problem?

Coffeehouse - How retarted it is that Win7 setup still doesn't provide...

ZippyV — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 15:34:24 GMT

Have you tried updating your BIOS?

Coffeehouse - How retarted it is that Win7 setup still doesn't provide...

phreaks — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 15:58:19 GMT

Sven Groot said:

phreaks said:

*snip*

I don't think any of us are saying it doesn't exist. It simply appears there is another component necessary for this bug to occur that we don't yet know about.

Certainly, apparently there is no empirical data to support the claim.

Quantitative vs Analytical processes are fundamentally different, but we draw conclusions from both.

Coffeehouse - How retarted it is that Win7 setup still doesn't provide...

OnlyJack — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 19:50:50 GMT

Yggdrasil said:

Sven Groot said:

*snip*

I hope so, though it's hard to take seriously a bug report that starts with the word "retarded". And misspelled at that.

I wish I knew before that posts titles can't be edited since this one was my first post. I had to cut&paste the post and rewrite the title at least four times because I was keeping getting a nice "The server method AddPost failed." msgbox all the time.

I think the issue is in the videocard itself, I've read of some people flashing other video bioses to stop the issue however if all you need to make it stop is specify through msconfig boot options how much RAM and how many processors/cores your CPU has it's definitely either a driver issue or the OS reporting wrong values to the video driver. What is known is that it's not just me having the issue, there are at least 40 pages about the problem on AMD forums (that I linked in my 2nd post) and also tweaked Catalyst drivers like DNA's are including a patch for the issue.

That said, it's still nonsense for the windows setup to lack an option to disable third-party drivers loading during the install because Microsoft cannot ensure that all the included OEM drivers in the windows install disc will work correctly on any PC configuration. For instance, when I installed vista for the first time, the install was BSODding too due to the broken JMicron driver included in the disc and I wasn't the only one with that issue, just look at some of the titles of these google results. In that case I could get rid of the BSOD by selecting IDE mode (not available on all BIOSes) or by loading a newer JMicron the driver from the setup but as said this can't be done with all drivers because only few hardware manufacturers give you those pretty ZIP files with just the "naked" driver inside requiring no extra useless software or setups to work that can be loaded in the windows setup.

Coffeehouse - How retarted it is that Win7 setup still doesn't provide...

DouglasH — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 04:15:00 GMT

OnlyJack said:

Yggdrasil said:

*snip*

I wish I knew before that posts titles can't be edited since this one was my first post. I had to cut&paste the post and rewrite the title at least four times because I was keeping getting a nice "The server method AddPost failed." msgbox all the time.

I think the issue is in the videocard itself, I've read of some people flashing other video bioses to stop the issue however if all you need to make it stop is specify through msconfig boot options how much RAM and how many processors/cores your CPU has it's definitely either a driver issue or the OS reporting wrong values to the video driver. What is known is that it's not just me having the issue, there are at least 40 pages about the problem on AMD forums (that I linked in my 2nd post) and also tweaked Catalyst drivers like DNA's are including a patch for the issue.

That said, it's still nonsense for the windows setup to lack an option to disable third-party drivers loading during the install because Microsoft cannot ensure that all the included OEM drivers in the windows install disc will work correctly on any PC configuration. For instance, when I installed vista for the first time, the install was BSODding too due to the broken JMicron driver included in the disc and I wasn't the only one with that issue, just look at some of the titles of these google results. In that case I could get rid of the BSOD by selecting IDE mode (not available on all BIOSes) or by loading a newer JMicron the driver from the setup but as said this can't be done with all drivers because only few hardware manufacturers give you those pretty ZIP files with just the "naked" driver inside requiring no extra useless software or setups to work that can be loaded in the windows setup.

OnlyJack,

Well gotcha taken care of as I am having the issue, and yes from my research it has been going on for quite awhile now. Although I did just build this system all MTI amd chipset and ati vid card.

Funny thing is that it also occurs with the onboard vid

I would hope from the near daily BSODs that I am getting and reporting back to MS in win7 will provide enough info that they can finally fix this stupid thing.

Douglash